Too many top male actors went to public school, says Arts Council chief - Telegraph Art Too many top male actors went to public school, says Arts Council chief Sir Peter Bazalgette laments why a disproportionate number of people from top private schools like Eton had made a success of acting Eton-educated Dominic West won a Bafta for his portrayal of the serial killer Fred West in 'Appropriate Adult' Photo: ITV By Christopher Hope , Senior Political Correspondent 10:00PM BST 20 Jun 2014 Follow Too many top male actors went to public school according to the chairman of the Arts Council. Sir Peter Bazalgette lamented why a disproportionate number of people from top private schools like Eton had made a success of acting. Sir Peter – who is best known for bringing reality television programme Big Brother to Channel Four – made his remarks at a conference this week to celebrate the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. The British stage is currently blessed with a crop of fine actors, a large number of whom went to public school. They include Dominic West, Damian Lewis and Eddie Redmayne, who all went to Eton, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who won an art scholarship to Harrow.

West won a Bafta for his portrayal of the serial killer Fred West, while Lewis has won a Golden Globe and an Emmy award. Related Articles Where should the Arts Council make its cuts? 02 Jul 2013 Speaking in a debate on the role of the state in art, Sir Peter said: “I am bound to say that the Etonians who win the Baftas for male actor are very good actors but I am also bound to say they cannot be the only good actors in the country.” Sir Peter was educated at Dulwich College, an independent school. He was speaking alongside Culture minister Ed Vaizey, who went to St Paul’s public school. He added: “I do think sometimes that the state sector which accounts for 93 per cent of our children possibly doesn’t generate quite the creative and acting talent that it could were people in that sector given the same quality of education in performing they get in private schools.” Arts Council England is a government-funded body dedicated to promoting the performing, visual and literary arts. It distributes hundreds of millions of pounds of lottery funding every year.

Sir Peter told the Liberty 2014 conference: “I am bound to say that the Etonians who win the Baftas for male actor are very good actors but I am also bound to say they cannot be the only good actors in the country.” Speaking afterwards to the Telegraph, Sir Peter stressed that he was “not knocking those actors who got awards”. But he said: “It is the case that at the moment we have a brilliant cadre of leading public school actors. “But they seem to me to be out of proportion since they come from 7 per cent of the population and 93 per cent is state-educated. “Of course there are great actors from state schools as well but there is a danger that we are going to marginalise performing arts when they are very important for the creative industries and they are very important for the country.” Sir Peter said that he would like the Government to require inspectors to mark down state schools which did not have good drama facilities.

He said: What I have argued is that you should not be able to get an excellent rating in a school inspection from Ofsted unless you have got a thoroughly good vigorous wide arts education going on in the school.” Alistair Smith, the acting editor of The Stage magazine, said the problem was that acting was “still a very badly paid line of work, except for the lucky few”. He said: “This means that more and more the people who are able to pursue a career in acting are those that can afford to, and they will therefore tend to come from more affluent backgrounds. This has become even more prominent in recent years.” James McAvoy: Dominance of Rich-Kid Actors in the U.K. Is "Damaging for Society" | Hollywood Reporter James McAvoy: Dominance of Rich-Kid Actors in the U.K.

Is "Damaging for Society" 12:18 AM PST 2/10/2015 by Abid Rahman 20th Century Fox James McAvoy in 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' After the critical success of a number of "posh" private school educated actors, the 'X-Men' star feels that an acting career is becoming a purely elite thing. James McAvoy has waded into the ongoing debate in the U.K. on the current success and dominance of privately educated actors, telling the Herald of Scotland that if the current trend continues it would be "damaging for society." The Scottish actor, who paid his way through drama school by working in a bakery, was at pains not to criticize the success of privately educated actors, but he was worried that it wasn't representative of Britain as it is today. "Whenever we talk about this, we have to be very very clear.

There's a lot of posh actors that have been to boarding school and all that who are feeling very embattled, sort of cornered," he said, adding: "[N]obody has got anything against an actor who is posh and is doing really well." But McAvoy was concerned that people from all walks of life are not getting the same opportunities to work in the arts, and his chief worry was about how this will become a bigger problem five or ten years from now. If the trends are allowed to continue, McAvoy said, "That's a frightening world to live in, because as soon as you get one tiny pocket of society creating all the arts, or culture starts to become representative not of everybody but of one tiny part, and that's not fair to begin with, but it's also damaging for society." Private schools such as Eton and Harrow are some of the oldest and most elite in the U.K. They often produce future leaders and captains of industry, but in recent years they have begun to churn out stellar acting talent.

The Eton-educated Eddie Redmayne (a classmate of Prince William) and Harrow-educated Benedict Cumberbatch, who are both in the running for the best actor Oscar, are perhaps the most telling examples of the dominance of "posh" actors. But there's also Dominic West (Eton, classmate of Prime Minister David Cameron), Damian Lewis (Eton), Tom Hiddleston (Eton), Henry Cavil (Stowe), Jamie Campbell Bower (Bedales), Tom Hardy (Reed), Matthew Goode (Exeter) and Dan Stevens (Tonbridge), among others. And it's not just the guys. A whole generation of British actresses are seemingly disproportionately from so-called posh schools, including Rosamund Pike (Badminton), Alice Eve (Bedales), Juno Temple (Bedales), Carey Mulligan (Woldingham), Kate Beckinsale (Godolphin and Latymer), Imogen Poots (Latymer), Emilia Clarke (St Edward's), Emily Blunt (Hurtwood House) and Rebecca Hall (Roedean).

The class debate in British acting circles has been raging for some time now, and recently veteran actress Julie Walters (Billy Elliot, Mamma Mia!) spoke out about how working-class actors can't afford to go to drama school and said the situation was "shocking." David Morrissey (Walking Dead) also weighed in, saying only people with rich parents could hope to make acting a career . On the flip side, Michael Gambon has welcomed the current flowering of "posh" actors, quipping to the Radio Times, “[t]he more Old Etonians the better, I think!” Gambon added: “[T]he two or three who are playing at the moment are geniuses, aren’t they? The more geniuses you get, the better.

It’s to do with being actors and wanting to do it; it’s nothing to do with where they come from.” Damian Lewis, Eton College And American TV's Upper-Crust British Invasion | The Huffington Post Damian Lewis, Eton College And American TV's Upper-Crust British Invasion 12/14/2011 02:58 am ET | Updated Dec 14, 2011 420 Catherine Lawson Writer and Editor Here's a trivia question that's bound to stump all but the most accomplished students of high-brow TV: What do Dr. Gregory House, Det. Jimmy McNulty and Sgt. Nicholas Brody all have in common? Give up? All three of these red-blooded Americans are portrayed by actors who were educated at Eton College, one of the oldest and most venerable training grounds for blue-blooded Brits. And they're not alone. Old Etonian (or, for those in the know, "O.E.") actors have been slumming it on the small screen in the U.S.

ever since Patrick MacNee first unfurled his lethal umbrella in "The Avengers." Now, a new crop of alumni -- including Tom Hiddleston ("Wallander"), Eddie Redmayne ( "The Pillars of the Earth" ), Harry Lloyd ( "Game of Thrones" ), Simon Woods ( "Rome" ) and Max Pirkis ( "Rome" ) -- is making it harder than ever to dismiss the school as an incubator for the elite. "It seems as if, you want to have somebody starring in an American blockbuster, you come to Eton College," observed Hailz-Emily Osborne, the school's director of drama. Founded by King Henry VI in 1440, Eton College is an expensive boarding school for boys aged 13 to 18, located 25 miles west of London. The school is defined by ancient traditions and idiosyncracies: Students -- divided into "Oppidans" and "Collegers" -- wear distinctive black tailsuits and white ties, teachers are known as Beaks, and the three semesters making up the academic year are called halves.

The school even has its own sport, the Eton wall game, and its own dessert in the form of Eton Mess. Eton is the alma mater of Princes William and Harry, as well as Princess Diana's brother Viscount Althorp. Prime Minister David Cameron was educated there, as were 18 of his predecessors, including the First Duke of Wellington and Gladstone. In the realm of fiction, James Bond and "Magnum P.I." sidekick Jonathan Higgins both went to Eton. Old Etonians who have found fame on U.S. television include Jeremy Brett ("The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"), Christopher Cazenove ("Dynasty") and Charles Shaughnessy ( "The Nanny" ). But none of those actors achieved the kind of iconic, all-American status now enjoyed by fellow alumni Hugh Laurie , Dominic West and Damian Lewis .

Before he joined "House" as the show's irascible, drug-addicted title character, Laurie was mostly famous for being one-half of a British television comedy duo with Stephen Fry, and for playing a fictional O.E., the quintessentially nice but dim aristocrat Bertie Wooster in the PBS series "Jeeves & Wooster." Laurie's portrayal of Gregory House is so convincing that many viewers remain unaware that, unlike his character, he does not hail from southern New Jersey. Lewis currently stars in Showtime's C.I.A. terrorist drama "Homeland," in which he plays U.S. Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody, after bursting onto the scene with his Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Dick Winters, the central figure in HBO's "Band of Brothers ." He also headlined NBC's "Life," in which he played another American in the form of LAPD police officer and ex-con Charlie Crews.

Meanwhile, his contemporary at Eton, Dominic West, tossed out the rulebook with his portrayal of the hard-boiled, hard-drinking Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty in five seasons of "The Wire." He's since gone on to play a range of dramatic characters, including real-life serial killer Fred West (no relation), smooth 1950s news anchor Hector Madden ("The Hour"), and 17th century ruler Oliver Cromwell ("The Devil's Whore"). In a recent telephone interview with HuffPost TV, West said , "Eton did everything to help me become an actor." He acknowledged the thriving pool of talent, adding, "There do seem to be a hell of a lot of Etonian actors around, but all I can think of is that it's just a school that brings out your talent and nurtures it, and for that I was very grateful." So what is Eton's secret? Are they producing great actors by accident or by design? Osborne, who's worked at the school for 13 years alongside Director of Theatre Studies Simon Dormandy, says the answer lies partly in the curriculum and partly in the first-class facilities.

The school stages more than 20 theatrical productions each year, from the classics to risky, ultra-modern plays, using the professionally equipped 400-seat Farrer Theatre as well as several smaller venues. The boys also benefit from an annual Director in Residence program. The students are encouraged not only to act, but to think too. "When a boy has an idea," she said, "everybody around him takes it terribly seriously and we all do our best to to make sure he can do it." The drama department also arranges master classes, the most recent of which saw Sir Ian McKellen giving "an absolutely stunning" class on the sonnets. Recent graduates like Eddie Redmayne have been conscientious about returning to give talks. Osborne said that the success enjoyed by Redmayne, Hiddleston, Woods and others has had a "snowball effect" on today's pupils. They now see acting as a real prospect, and "when they see boys they knew in movies and working with Woody Allen, they think, 'I could do that too!'" Unlike most teenage boys with dreams of stardom, Etonians know how to leverage their organizational skills -- and their connections -- to maximize chances of actually making it.

"They plan their careers, and they do a lot of work here to make sure they've got agents," said Osborne. "Now it's a very pro operation." So, who will be the next big acting talent to emerge from Eton's drama program? One figure to watch is 19-year-old Oxford University undergraduate Henry Faber, who's already carved out an impressive theatrical resume, including 14 productions from his time at Eton. Attention, producers of quality TV dramas: This opportunity won't last. The time to start shopping for scripts featuring an intense, home-grown 21-year-old American is now. And the breeding ground is in Britain. 1 Hollywood beckons for former public school pupils - Telegraph Hollywood beckons for former public school pupils Our public schools have produced a host of stars who could dominate film awards for years Chiwetel Ejiofor, centre, in a scene from the film, '12 Years A Slave' Photo: AP Follow Twenty years ago they performed alongside each other in a school production of the Shakespearean comedy Measure for Measure at Dulwich College, taking their first tentative steps toward a career in acting.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, then aged just 16 and a pupil at the leading independent south London school, starred as Angelo, while Sally Hawkins, then a pupil at the nearby James Allen’s Girls’ School, played a member of the Venetian court. Tonight the pair will be alongside each other once again, but this time at the Golden Globes ceremony in Los Angeles as they compete for the prestigious Hollywood acting awards. Sally Hawkins (GETTY IMAGES) Ejiofor is the favourite for the best actor honour for his searing portrayal of a man captured into slavery in 12 Years A Slave, with Hawkins nominated for best supporting actress for her role as Ginger, Cate Blanchett’s adopted sister in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. Related Articles And my Oscar winners are . . . 12 Jan 2014 But if they win their respective awards tonight, their rise to Hollywood aristocracy will not just represent a personal victory but another triumph for the production line of young talent coming from Britain’s oldest and most traditional public schools.

As well as the two leading Dulwich schools, Eton, Harrow and The Harrodian School in Barnes, west London, have all helped to produce a line-up of stars that are well placed to dominate the film industry’s awards season for years to come. Ejiofor, 36, spent five years at Dulwich , which was itself founded by a successful Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn, in 1619. He went on to win a scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and starred in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad at the age of just 19. Hawkins, 37, who was a year above Ejiofor, was born in Dulwich and went on to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art after leaving James Allen’s Girls’ School, known as JAGs. Eddie Redmayne, 32, the star of Les Miserables, and Damian Lewis, 42, the star of Homeland, are just two of the current generation of British actors to have attended Eton, while Benedict Cumberbatch, 37, best known for the BBC’s Sherlock and several successful Hollywood films, was educated at Harrow.

Eddie Redmayne (REX FEATURES) Only last week, two former pupils of The Harrodian proved that the production line of talent from Britain’s leading public schools shows no signs of coming to a halt any time soon. Both George MacKay, 21, who appears in the screen musical Sunshine on Leith, and Will Poulter, 20, the young star of We’re The Millers, were nominated for the rising star award at next month’s Baftas. MacKay won a part as one of the Lost Boys in the 2003 film Peter Pan, after being spotted in a school play by an acting scout. Industry observers say public school pupils have an inbuilt advantage over their state school counterparts, however talented, when it comes to seeking a career on stage Alistair Smith, deputy editor of The Stage newspaper, said: “It’s in part to do with the first-class theatre facilities these schools are able to offer, which means the pupils get a very early experience of staging almost professional standard productions and get a taste for it. There is also an economic element, as the cost of theatre training is very expensive unless you are lucky enough to get a scholarship.

That gives aspiring actors from well-off families a certain advantage.” Ejiofor, 36, was born in London to prosperous Nigerian parents who fled the country in the Sixties, during the Biafran war. At the age of 11 his father, a doctor, was killed in a road accident on a family visit to Nigeria. Ejiofor narrowly escaped with his life, but still bears a scar on his forehead from the crash. He discovered acting two years later, when he first walked into Dulwich College’s renowned drama department. Ejiofor went on to win the school’s drama cup and was fast-tracked to play Othello at the National Youth Theatre in 1995. As well as his early role in Amistad, he won plaudits as a schizophrenic patient in Blue/Orange at the National Theatre, and starred in Dirty Pretty Things, Stephen Frears’s harrowing story of illegal immigrants in London. Now, not only is he the favourite for the Best Actor Oscar before the nominations are even announced this week, but he is also in the running for the same accolade at tonight’s Golden Globes and the Baftas .

Of his first taste of performing at school, Ejiofor has said: “I was able to go on stage and work until it felt right or felt good. It meant that I very quickly realised that it was the job for me. “I was just completely taken by stories. And I remember taking that into English literature at school and taking that into Shakespeare and finding that opened up a whole world of self-expression to me that I didn’t have access to previously.” Peter Jolly, the college’s director of drama, said: “Chewy was obviously very talented from a young age. He had ability to take directions and was a fantastic team player.” He added: “There’s a huge amount of talent in both state and private schools, but we are lucky at Dulwich, and at schools like Eton and Harrow, that we have good facilities and that drama is embedded in the curriculum. We are now seeing that investment come to fruition. It also helps that pupils see examples of old boys who have forged a career in acting.

A few years before Chewy we had Rupert Penry-Jones and Nigel Harman.” Redmayne, who after leaving Eton – where he was a prefect alongside Prince William – won praise for his performance as a gauche Old Etonian charged with looking after Marilyn Monroe, in My Week with Marilyn, has admitted his background has had its advantages. “I think our historic and literary heritage in [England] means there are many good stories to tell and a lot of them tend to be period piece and I’m very lucky to be part of that,” he said. For all their perceived foppishness, Hollywood appears happy to cast former British public school pupils against type. Damian Lewis (Ashdown House School, East Sussex, and Eton) established himself as a Hollywood star with his role as marine turned would-be terrorist Nicholas Brody in Homeland, and Dominic West (Eton), made a name for himself as the Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty in The Wire.

Such is the phenomenon of US producers choosing Old Etonians and other British public school boys that Redmayne recently joked: “When HBO want a gritty, hard-bitten, authentically American character to head up a mini-series, they instinctively think: Old Etonian.” Other former public school pupils include Harry Lloyd (Eton), who appeared in BBC One’s 2011 version of Great Expectations and as the young Denis Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Isabelle Allen, the acclaimed 11-year-old star of Les Miserables, was spotted as she performed in a school play at the independent Moira House school, in East Sussex. Robert Pattinson, the star of the Twilight series of films, is another former pupil of The Harrodian. It seems that where they were once famous for turning out prime ministers, captains of industry and military commanders, our oldest fee-paying schools now seem just as likely to produce stars of stage and screen. But the trend has caused some anxiety behind the scenes, with a number of directors and producers expressing concern that the pool of talent from which British film and theatre draws its future stars is becoming narrower.

“A thinning of the social spectrum is a real concern and a real worry,” said Dominic Dromgoole, the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre , who has set up Globe Young Players, a theatre group for children “from all walks of life”, to deliberately recruit a broader mix of young actors. Additional reporting by Olivia Rudgard Start your free 30 day Amazon Prime trial» The Wire | Dominic West: 'Boarding School Left Me Emotionally Scarred' | Contactmusic.com Dominic West: 'Boarding School Left Me Emotionally Scarred' Dominic West: 'Boarding School Left Me Emotionally Scarred' The Wire Eddie Redmayne Dominic West Dominic West ’s described his time at Britain’s prestigious Eton College boarding school as the worst experience of his life. The $48,667 (£37,062) a year school has produced a number of leading British acting stars including Eddie Redmayne , Damian Lewis, Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston, and has educated 19 U.K. Prime Ministers in its 576 year history.

However despite the school's stellar reputation Dominic, 46, says his time there was the worst experience of his life, due to being separated from his parents. "It (going to Eton) was the worst feeling I have ever had, very similar to the grief when my parents died," he tells Britain's Radio Times magazine."It's the same thing really; you think you've lost your parents. I learned to bury the emotional effects of that and then I went to drama school and had to dig it all up again." Although Eton has schooled many of the current crop of British actors finding success in Hollywood, Dominic says his elite education wasn't necessarily to his advantage as in his homeland it would have excluded him from playing characters from poorer backgrounds. In particular, he refers to his starmaking role as working class police detective Jimmy MCNulty in the acclaimed U.S. crime drama The Wire as a part he'd never have received on U.K. TV. "In America, the British class system doesn't exist," he explains. "I don't know if I would ever have had the chance to play a blue-collar cop like MCNulty in The Wire on the BBC. "I got away with it there.

Americans are very forgiving on accents because they don't really know how other people sound." The star, who has a voice role in Disney/Pixar's new animated blockbuster Finding Dory, admits that being British has been advantageous to him when working in the U.S. due to positive assumptions Americans have about Britons that they do not share themselves. "In New York, I find Brits are admired way beyond our abilities," he adds. "They look to us for all sorts of things that we wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with - fairness, good governance and democracy, but also style and other things I certainly don't have." In Finding Dory, which is released in U.K cinemas on Friday (29Jul16), Dominic has teamed up with his fellow Brit and The Wire alumni Idris Elba to voice a pair of sea lions. Contactmusic Tom Hollander is wrong. Posh dominance of culture is not just fashion | Stuart Jeffries | Opinion | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Perhaps, and it’s just a theory, the privately educated actors on our screens and stages got there by accident.

Maybe it’s just happenstance that Benedict Cumberbatch (Harrow), Tom Hiddlestone (Eton), Eddie Redmayne (Eton), Damian Lewis (Eton) and Dominic West (Eton) are leading lights in their profession. Just possibly the fact that these actors’ parents could afford the fees of Harrow and Eton (the latter currently runs at £35,721 per annum ) did not substantially contribute to their later career trajectories. It’s possible. From Downton Abbey to Kirstie's crafts … the New Boring is everywhere Read more Here’s something else that is possible. The fact that there are so many posh actors on screen and stage is symptomatic of fashion. This is the possibility the actor Tom Hollander sets out in an interview this week. A few years ago, he argued, there were “lots of working-class-hero leading actors – it was not fashionable to sound posh. Now I’m middle-aged it’s fashionable to sound posh if you are the generation behind me.” Think of it this way. Back in the day, acting was dominated by the Shameless ethos, in which leading roles were written by, for and about prole scum.

The Cumberbatches of the time had to sit home unemployed buffing their monocles, poor loves. Now? In Britain today, pompous posh is bankable. It looks like the posh have staged a counter-revolution. Back in the Britpop era, chippy nobodies like me with regional accents and state educations were the last word. In those halcyon days, those with the misfortune not to have been born in Manchester were compelled to affect Liam Gallagher’s lairy Manc swagger and irrepressible idioms like Kathy Burke’s troubled teen Perry in the Harry Enfield show . Otherwise you were nobody. Now? Autre temps, autre moeurs, as Liam used to say. What worries me about Tom Hollander’s remark is that it hides a conservative agenda. He uses a notion of what fashion isn’t (namely that fashions unaccountably change; that hemlines rise and fall as inexplicably as the motions of sub-atomic particles) to obscure class problems in British society of which those in the acting profession are the most clamorous exemplars. Fashions, like our tastes in TV, cinema and theatre, often express the prevailing power relations of a society.

Why was the writer of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes, elevated to become Baron Fellowes of West Stafford in 2011? It wasn’t just because he depicted a reactionary social order but because he helped to create one and thereby served a Conservative-dominated coalition. He contributed, as I argued at the time, to a movement best called the New Boring (which also included Ed Sheeran, Kirsty Allsopp’s craft programmes and the Great British Bake-Off), to the acceptance of the austerity agenda of our leading Etonian (the prime minister, David Cameron). Just as Fellowes’ leading political achievement was the TV equivalent of bromide in soldiers’ tea to make living in recession Britain palatable for a people who ought to know better, so the effect of Tom Hollander’s remarks is to discourage us from exploring what has gone wrong and what is continuing to go wrong in one of the most sclerotic societies in the western world. Acting, like politics, is a profession becoming the ringfenced fiefdom of daddy-bankrolled spawn Culture, like fashion, like actors, doesn’t come out of nowhere.

Think of last year’s comedy spy film Kingsman, starring Colin Firth as a mash-up of Gok Wan and Henry Higgins, in which he schooled some unfortunate pleb into the sartorial dictates of posh-boy espionage. The most striking aspect of the storyline was that our working class hero was co-opted into a system he would have done better to destroy. Much culture in our current years of austerity has this ideological role – to keep us calm and carry on, which really means to make us shut up and defer to our masters. Maybe, in this context, it isn’t entirely pointless to question why there are so many Etonians at the forefront of British acting and British politics. Maybe the preponderance of posh in one is linked to a similar stranglehold by the other? Only 7% of Britain’s school-age population attend private school but half the cabinet did . Maybe the lack of diversity that Idris Elba railed against when he spoke to MPs recently – holding black and other ethnic minority acting talent down – isn’t just “fashion” but something terrible that we could, if we had the will, change.

Hollander (who attended Abingdon School , whose current day fee is £17,775 and full boarding fee £36,960) argues that British society doesn’t face the same class divisions that are depicted in Fellowes’ Gosford Park (in which he had a role) or Downton Abbey. This is hardly news: we all know we don’t live in Edwardian England. But citing the difference between the class system then and now serves to hide rather than help us think about the divisions in our society in 2016. What Elba overcame to get where he is today is not “nothing” and what holds back other actors from deprived social backgrounds are not merely the vestiges of an old class system but a new form of it. Fewer opportunities for state-educated actors, says Charles Dance Read more Acting, like politics, is a profession becoming the ringfenced fiefdom of daddy-bankrolled spawn. Judi Dench, David Morrissey and other actors have bemoaned the opportunities for those less favoured. Tom Hollander could have joined that justified complaint. Instead, Hollander’s remarks, if accepted, facilitate British quietism and deference.

It’s our traditional posture in this United Boredom. We stand behind the velvet ropes of old aristos’ pads, we revel in the televised pomp of Downton and its eulogies to a past that never existed, we salute Etonian actors’ contribution to Britain’s exports, we say posh dominance of culture is just fashion. We could do better. We could think about the self-hatred and delusion that our nostalgic culture industry caters for and makes money from. We could reflect on how distant we are from an egalitarian society. That isn’t fashion – it’s political reality. • This article was amended on 2 March 2016. An earlier version referred to the film Kingsman as Kingpin.

Eton's class act - how the renowned school is turning out a new generation of actors | Daily Mail Online Eton's class act - how the renowned school is turning out a new generation of actors comments They’re at David Cameron’s old school, but these five young men are more interested in following in the footsteps of old boys Hugh Laurie and Damian Lewis than becoming Prime Minister From left-to-right: Guy Clark, 18, playwright, actor and director; Jonah Hauer-King, 17, leading actor; Nico MacDonagh, 14, young leading actor; Dan Byam Shaw, 17, director, writer and performer; Jack Parham, 16, actor and director What links together the world’s most-watched TV show House, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the gritty urban drugs drama The Wire and the award-winning West End play Red? Somewhat surprisingly its star names all went to Eton College. The school, which was once called ‘the chief nurse of England’s statesmen’ because of its reputation for breeding senior politicians and prime ministers, including David Cameron, now has a new claim to fame as a powerhouse for some of Britain’s finest actors.

Eton’s motto, ‘Floreat Etona’ (‘Let Eton flourish’), has never seemed more apt as former pupils such as Hugh Laurie, Dominic West, Damian Lewis, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston and Harry Lloyd dominate our stage and screens. Such is the current reputation of the school – one commentator has even gone so far as to call it ‘the alternative Rada’ – that its plays sometimes attract London agents on the lookout for the next big thing. Next month, Eton is sending four shows and 50 of its boys to the Edinburgh Fringe, the largest number in the school’s history. To mark the occasion, the school’s renowned drama department has opened its doors for a rare glimpse inside and to meet the five rising stars it believes can mimic the success of its famous alumni. While Eton was founded by Henry VI in 1440, in the past drama was regarded as second-rate. Indeed, when English teacher and sometime director Michael Meredith first arrived at the school in 1965 he was surprised by Eton’s disparaging attitude. Eton's five rising stars in school uniform.

Such is the current reputation of the school, one commentator has even gone so far as to call it 'the alternative Rada' This was, he says, a hangover from a regime that banned the subject at the end of the 19th century. ‘I think the school thought it rather decadent and pointless,’ he says. By the time Meredith retired from full-time teaching in 2000, the drama department had been transformed. ‘Michael was one of the key figures who changed the way drama was perceived in the school,’ says Simon Dormandy, a former RSC actor and now head of theatre studies. ‘He, my predecessor Peter Broad and later Angus Graham-Campbell have overseen some tremendously exciting, cutting-edge productions.’ The school puts on 20-25 shows a year in three spaces – the impressive 400-seat Farrer Theatre (complete with revolving stage and orchestra pit) and two smaller studios.

Lining the corridor that leads down to the dressing room are photographs of past productions, some of which feature some famous faces: the young Dominic West playing Hamlet, a youthful-looking Damian Lewis as Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, Tom Hiddleston as Bernard Nightingale in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Harry Lloyd in Three Sisters and Waiting For Godot, and Eddie Redmayne as Henry IV and as Adela Quested in A Passage To India. ‘You cannot always spot their talent at this age,’ says Dormandy, who is leaving the school in January to pursue a career as a director. ‘But I knew Eddie Redmayne was an outstanding actor from our first meeting, when I auditioned him, aged just 15, for the leading role in my version of A Passage To India. 'I don’t think I fully appreciated quite how exceptional he is until I saw him in his first professional role, as Viola in the Globe company’s Twelfth Night opposite Mark Rylance. ‘I realised Sebastian Armesto was a real actor, not just a schoolboy with talent, when he played Sir Anthony Absolute in The Rivals for me.

'We decided to make him a bluff American Senator from Alabama, so it was a complete character creation, turning a young, wiry English boy into a fat, ageing, raging Southern Baptist.’ In 1991 four boys created the theatre company Double Edge Drama, with the sole purpose of taking quality plays to Edinburgh. The 50 boys about to descend upon the festival marking 21 years of Eton at the Fringe are staging their shows – Almost Nothing To Do With Frogs, Apples, Flames Over New Jersey and Spring Awakening – at the Underbelly, the venue created by Charlie Wood, one of the original founders of Double Edge. L-R: Dan Byam Shaw, Jonah Hauer-King, Jack Parham, Guy Clark, Nico MacDonagh. Next month, Eton is sending four shows and 50 of its boys to the Edinburgh Fringe, the largest number in the school's history The boys are aided by the generosity of the Fred Hood Memorial Fund, in the memory of a former Old Etonian – and another founder of the Underbelly – who died in a skiing accident in 2008, aged 28.

A fund set up and funded by alumni in the name of Michael Meredith is providing financial assistance in the form of an annual prize. The first winner of the prize, 18-year-old Guy Clark, is one of Eton’s faces to watch. He is using the £500 award to take his satirical adaptation of Aristophanes’ The Frogs to Edinburgh. Clark was in the middle of rehearsals when he heard the news. ‘One day last term, a teacher (Hailz-Emily Osborne, the school’s director of drama) came into the room and asked if she could have a word,’ says Guy. ‘I thought to myself, “Oh no, what have I done? I must be in huge trouble.” But she told me that she had some good news. I couldn’t stop grinning to myself.’ The concept of Almost Nothing To Do With Frogs – about two washed-up comedy writers who venture to the underworld in search of the world’s greatest playwright – was the brainchild of Guy’s writing partner, 17-year-old Dan Byam Shaw, who also directs.

Dan has the theatre in his blood: his great-great uncle was the actor and director Glen Byam Shaw; his uncle is the former actor and successful producer Matthew Byam Shaw. ‘I know it’s tough out there,’ says the youngster, ‘but who knows, maybe one day I will see something I’ve written up in lights in the West End.’ The youngest actor, Nico MacDonagh, 14, is already aware of how Old Etonians have paved the way for his work. ‘I admired Eddie Redmayne’s performance in Birdsong – he’s definitely inspired me to act.’ During the Live photo shoot Nico has to rely on crutches as he suffers from what he describes as ‘dead bone’ in his knee, yet he is looking forward to starring in Spring Awakening at Edinburgh as well as playing one of the witches in Macbeth, a production at Eton that will also feature two boys who have won drama scholarships funded by alumni (some rumoured to be household names) designed to help students who could not otherwise afford the school’s £30,000 annual fees. The lead roles in Shakespeare’s tragedy will be taken by Jonah Hauer-King as the king and Jack Parham as Lady Macbeth.

Jonah, 17, says Eton’s old boys are an inspiration: ‘It’s nice to know people at the same school and in a similar situation have been able to pursue a successful career in something they love, and break away from more common expectations.’ Jack, 16, adds: ‘Being aware of such a long list of famous alumni gave me motivation to pursue my interest in drama at the school and possibly as a career in the future. 'It made me realise that the school is not just focused on academics, but takes all areas of school life seriously. 'Their success has given me the confidence to make drama an important part of my life at Eton.’ Tickets, £7-£9, are available from underbelly.co.uk or the Fringe Office, edfringe.com Didn't the Eton Old Boys do well... Dominic West (left) once said that when he first arrived at Eton he felt like a fish out of water.

Harry Lloyd (right) has trod the boards in the West End and gone on to star in Jane Eyre and The Iron Lady Dominic West, 42 Eton 1982-87 Best known for playing the maverick detective Jimmy McNulty, the hard-drinking, authority–baiting Irish American in the acclaimed HBO Stateside police drama The Wire. Also won praise for his portrayal of serial killer Fred West in last year’s powerful ITV bio-pic, Appropriate Adult. Once told Live magazine that when he first arrived at Eton he felt like a fish out of water. ‘The one positive was that I did a lot of acting there. I was able to nurture that side of myself.’ Harry Lloyd, 28 Eton 1997-2002 The great-great-great-grandson of the English-speaking world’s most famous novelist, Charles Dickens, he made his TV debut at 16 in a BBC adaptation of one of his illustrious ancestor’s most famous books, David Copperfield.

Since then, he has trod the boards in the West End and gone on to star in Robin Hood, Game of Thrones, Jane Eyre and The Iron Lady – in which he played the young Denis Thatcher. Hugh Laurie (left) once described Eton as 'the most private of private schools'. Eddie Redmayne (right) says: 'It's the first thing that gets written about me' Hugh Laurie, 53 Eton 1972-77 His starring role as the brilliant but unorthodox American consultant Dr Gregory House in the hit U.S. medical drama House nets him $700,000 per episode, making him the highest paid actor in a television drama. He once described Eton as ‘the most private of private schools’. The actor and comedian, who shot to fame this side of the pond in Blackadder and Jeeves And Wooster, is also an accomplished musician.

Eddie Redmayne, 30 Eton 1995-2000 ‘It’s the first thing that gets written about me,’ sighs Eddie Redmayne, star of the moving World War I television drama Birdsong (adapted from the Sebastian Faulks bestseller), when discussing his old school. The heartthrob actor, who has also appeared in the award-winning My Week With Marilyn and stars in the forthcoming film version of Les Miserables, adds: ‘It’s the weird thing Eton does – you’re at school next to lords and earls and, in my case, Prince William, so you end up being used to dealing with those sorts of people.’ Sebastian Armesto (left) says: 'The facilities are amazing... I was exposed to some extraordinary works of theatre.' Tom Hiddleston (right) says the school is 'one of the most broad-minded places I've ever been' Sebastian Armesto, 30 Eton 1995-2000 ‘Eton’s drama department?

There’s nothing else to compare it to,’ says Armesto, star of The Tudors, the BBC’s Little Dorrit, as well as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Adds the historian’s son: ‘The facilities are amazing, there is an excellent group of teachers and I was exposed to some extraordinary works of theatre. It gave me a real taste of what it might be like to do as a job.’ Tom Hiddleston, 31 Eton 1994-99 Earlier this year, the versatile Hiddleston, who has starred in the Marvel comics big screen spin-off Thor, and Steven Spielberg’s World War I tearjerker War Horse, told Live that most people had misconceptions about his old school. ‘People think it’s just full of braying toffs, who are arrogant and chauvinistic, senseless and ambitious, who are destined to run the country and steal all our money,’ he said.

‘It isn’t true… It’s actually one of the most broad-minded places I’ve ever been.’ 'I kept the fact I went there (Eton) quiet for the longest time,' said Damian Lewis Damian Lewis, 41 Eton 1984-89 The flame-haired actor stars as troubled U.S. Marine sergeant Nick Brody in what is said to be President Barack Obama’s favourite TV show, the gripping, critically-lauded Homeland (which returns later this year). ‘I kept the fact I went there (Eton) quiet for the longest time, because I didn’t want to be stereotyped,’ says Lewis, who first shot to fame playing another American soldier in the World War II drama Band Of Brothers.

Question: At which school were actors Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis and Dominic West educated?
Answer: ETON COLLEGE